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Reason Online asked several contributors, including yours truly to choose their Person of the Year. My choice was Jim Webb (above) and here is why:Democratic senator-elect James Webb of Virginia. Earning a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts in Vietnam is Impressive. Authoring best-selling thrillers with juicy sex scenes is hot. Being one of the first public figures to Bash Bush's War is cool. "Maccacing" a would-be Republican presidential candidate in a Senate race in GOP stronghold is big. Providing the final Senate seat that tilted Capitol Hill to Democratic control is huge. Being a bit rude to the Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief is no vice. And having big balls in Washington, DC, is rare. Watch out status-quo buffs!

On a related topic. Please read my 2006: The Year of the Nationalist which was published in the Business Times of Singapore. Since access to their site is difficult, I'm pasting it here:

Well, that's what happens when you occupy countries in the Middle East for a very long time. You are probably suffering from post-occupation depression (POD). And when you need a Surge, you take Surgpill! Indeed, the anti-POD Surgpill stimulates the birth of new brain cells in rats jumping from ships aka Ken Adelmans, scientists have found. A similar effect in humans might explain how the drug has helped hundreds of of emperors world-wide to cope with POD. There are no sexual side-effects!

One in five members of the Bush Administration are likely to suffer from POD in the next two years, yet medical opinion is divided as to its cause. Some believe it is a genetic disease (stupidity) or a chemical imbalance (recovering alcholics)…

Check-out Surge Fever -- Catch It! on Stop the Spirit of Zossen, which has a link to an interview in an Israeli newspaper with Meyrav Wurmser. Unbelievable. Among other things this gems:Many of Wurmser's friends believe the disaster is not only in Iraq, but in the entire region. They are also very frustrated over the way in which Israel embarked on the war against Hizbullah this summer, and on the way it returned from it. "Hizbullah defeated Israel in the war. This is the first war Israel lost," Dr. Wurmser declares. Is this a popular stance in the administration, that Israel lost the war? "Yes, there is no doubt. It's not something one can argue about it. There is a lot of anger at Israel." What caused the anger?"I know this will annoy many of your readers… But the anger is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians. Instead of Israel fighting against Hizbullah, many parts of the American administration believe that Israel should have…

I've been receiving a lot of emails and phone calls from very depressed people who want to know what I think is going to happen now that W seems to have rejected Baker-Hamilton and whether we'll ever get out of all this mess in Iraq, the Middle East, etc. As I've written in the past, the modus operandi of the Bush Administantion's foreign policy is Muddling Through. The Bush administration has no idea what it's doing.Starting with 9/11, it has been an opportunistic policy that lacks an coherent strategic overview. It's basically based on the assumption that if we can do it, we'll do it! If there are counterpressures at home (election 2006) and abroad (Iraq), we'll try to cut our costs, buy some time and wait for an opportunity to push "forward." The only way that Baker-Hamilton plus the results of the mid-term could have had any effect of the Bushies is if the Democrats in Congress and/or a coalition of Democrats and Reublicans -- a majority i…

For much of the Cold War the Horn of Africa was a central battlefield and Ethiopia and Somalia switching sides between the US and the USSR. So it's kind of interesting that now that the Islamists in Somalia and Ethiopia are about to go to war , the American Hegemon isn't even pretending to be doing something about it. Why? Read Robert Samuelson's Farewell to Pax Americana. I think that he exaggerates American benign intention during the Cold War and makes it sound that Americans were responsible for all the progress that took place during that time. But Samuelsom makes some good points.

Journalist George Packer has done a great job covering the before and the after of the Iraq War that he covered for the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker and turned into a book, The Assassins Gate. Gary Kamiya had this to say about Packer and his book in a review on Salon.com The Road to hell :Most of the American left lined up against the war in Iraq. But some did not. Among the liberal intellectuals who supported the invasion was George Packer, a staff writer for the New Yorker. His new book, "The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq," proves that holding strong opinions about a subject does not prevent a journalist of integrity from reporting the truth, even if it flies in the face of what he had believed. "The Assassins' Gate" is almost certain to stand as the most comprehensive journalistic account of the greatest foreign-policy debacle in U.S. history.A funny thing happened to Packer: He went to Iraq. Reporting is a solvent that dissolves illusio…

One of Aesop's fables recounts how once upon a time Mount Ida, the birthplace of Zeus, experienced a huge earthquake. “The earth commenced to tremble and shake—and huge boulders flew off the mountain top into the sky,” the fable goes. “It seemed as if the mountain was about to give birth.” Then the sky blackened and the thunderous sound became even worse. Finally, “an earthquake more violent than any ever before it set everything in motion—and in one terrifying moment, the mountain's peak split wide open!” Some people got on their knees and began to pray. Others couldn't take their eyes off the mountain, wondering how it would end.

Suddenly the roaring, the shaking, and the shocks simply stopped. The whole region went silent. And then, slowly, “and with hardly a whisper of sound … out of the huge cleft in the mountain peak there slowly emerged … …

I haven't read Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid," and I'll probably browse during my weekend visits to Border's and Barnes&Noble. But I did follow all the angry reactions including in Jimmy Carter, Palestinian Sympathizer in which Alan Dershowitz is quoted saying that "It's obvious that Mr. Carter just doesn't like Israel or Israelis" while Marty Peretz predicts in the magazine his wife had bought him once that Carter "will go down in history ...as a Jew hater." In my Special Relationship: A one-sided U.S. policy toward Israel endangers both countries’ interests which was published in the American Conservative I refer to Carter:Indeed, Washington’s ability to play the role of an honest broker between Israel and Egypt (and Syria) after the 1973 Middle East War was only made possible when Richard Nixon re-established diplomatic ties with Cairo, co-opting it into the pro-American camp. It was the even-handed U.S.…

I'm working on a long commentary on Baker-Hamilton, but I was watching John McCain on television today doing his Churchill imitation during a Senate hearing as he called for sending more troops to Iraq and tried to make Baker sound like Chamberlain. To think that this guy could end up occuppying the White House. If Bush II made me nostalgic for Clinton and Bush I, will McCain make me feel nostalgic for Junior? Anyway... Joe Conason has a great piece on McCain as The Last Neocon on Salon.com. He asks:Does McCain really expect that the president and the Pentagon will accept his advice? Or is he merely positioning himself for the war's aftermath, when he will claim that his spurned counsel could have won the victory that eluded Bush? Is he truly an idealist -- or is he a cynical demagogue? The answers may be impossible to know. There is much evidence that he values his integrity, and much evidence that he values his ambition even more.

Almost 3,000 years ago, the famous storyteller Aesop lived in the Aegean region. One of his fables goes:

"A very deep and frightening sound began emanating from Mount Ida (the birthplace of Zeus). The earth commenced to tremble and shake -- and huge boulders flew off the mountain top into the sky. It seemed as if the mountain was about to give birth."

"The population was terrified and ran for shelter -- trembling in fear."

"The sky blackened and the thunderous sound from the sacred mountain became even worse. Finally, an earthquake more violent than any ever-before it, set everything in motion -- and in one terrifying moment, the mountain's peak split wide open!"

"The people all got down on their knees and began to pray. Some fainted from fear. Others couldn't take their eyes off the mountain -- wondering how this terror would end."

"Suddenly the roaring, the shaking, and the shocks just stopped. The whole Aegean region went silent.&quot…

A global affairs analyst, journalist, blogger, and author. I am a senior analyst at Wikistrat, teach political science at the University of Maryland, and cover Washington for the Singapore Business Times. I also write for Ha'aretz, blog at The Huffington Post, post commentaries on The National Interest, and am a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
Formerly a research fellow in at the Cato Institute and the United Nations correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, I have published in American and international newspapers and magazines, and have been affiliated with think tanks and academic institutions.
I authored "Quagmire: America in the Middle East" (Cato Institute, 1992) and of "Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
I have a Ph.D. in international relations from American University, and graduated from Columbia University with MA degrees from the schools of journalism and international affairs and a certificate from the Middle East Institute. I also graduated with an MA degrree in communication and received a BA degree in political science from Hebrew University.